


snow and dirty rain

by legdabs (scvlly)



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Introspection, M/M, abstract descriptions of depression + panic attack, i guess. kinda. idk, mostly rambly idk how to tag this it's just. drabbly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-10
Updated: 2019-01-10
Packaged: 2019-10-07 02:39:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,171
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17357354
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scvlly/pseuds/legdabs
Summary: sometimes, there are bad days.





	snow and dirty rain

 

 

> we have not touched the stars,  
>  nor are we forgiven, which brings us back  
>  to the hero's shoulders and the gentleness that comes,  
>  not from the absence of violence, but despite  
>  the abundance of it. the lawn drowned, the sky on fire,  
>  the gold light falling backwards through the glass  
>  of every room.

\- richard siken,  _snow and dirty rain_

 

* * *

There are two raindrops racing each other down the window, neither of them following a straight-forward path.

Dan watches them roll together, picking up other water droplets as they go, and tries draws a line in the condensation to connect them from his side of the glass, but they’re falling too quickly. The line joins nothing to nowhere, and when he tries to find the raindrops again, he realises he’s lost sight of them in amongst the others that dot the window.

With a sigh, he wipes at the condensation, erasing his line.

He supposes it doesn’t matter that he’ll never know who won.

* * *

 

There’s snow on the ground and swirling in the air, and Dan says, “I’m going outside.”  
  
Phil tells him not to; says it’s too cold, that he should at least wait for the snow to stop falling, but Dan’s shoes are already on his feet and his key is in the door.

“I’ll be back,” he says, and with that he’s gone, leaving Phil to hover in the window, waiting to see Dan’s dark silhouette leave their building and walk the length of the alleyway out into the street, and then into the park, until the snow and the angle that their apartment’s window has on it keeps him from sight.

Outside, Dan wraps his jacket tightly around himself; cursing his decision to externalise his apathy and wear a ridiculously thin denim jacket instead of a coat. He doesn’t know why he’s out here: he hates the snow, really, has done ever since he was driving in it when he was seventeen and still taking lessons and the white flakes swarming upwards towards the windscreen made him feel constantly under attack. It’s no better now, now that all he can see is white and tall shadows that are probably trees but could just as easily be men in long coats holding knives or cameras or things equally as dangerous.

His feet are wet, too. Looking down, he realises the boots he thought he’d put on aren’t boots at all but instead, his running trainers, made from a fabric so breathable that the snow he’s standing in is making its way through it and into the shoes themselves. His cheeks sting from the cold and melting snow is falling from his hair in rivulets that seem to be drawn to his eyes, making him wince, but he can’t go back inside.

Going back inside means admitting defeat. Going back inside means facing Phil, who will either say ‘I told you so’, or strip him down to his underwear and force him into soft pyjamas and under a heated blanket on their sofa. Going back inside means smothering his combative streak or wordlessly accepting a kindness he feels he doesn’t deserve.

Staying here is easier. Here, where he doesn’t have to face his feelings, where his hands can stay as numb as his mind feels, and has felt for days. Here, where the world could end around him, and the snow would hide that truth from him for as long as he’s stood still.

Dan closes his eyes, tilting his head back. When he opens them, all he can see is the falling snow, grey and ash-like against the dark sky.

It tastes like nothing when it meets his lips. 

* * *

 

He has a reoccurring dream in which he’s driving through fog late at night, even though he hasn’t driven for years, really, and he’s not sure that he’s actually ever driven in fog at all.

Even from in the car he can tell it’s dense. It feels close, so close that it’s as though it’s circulating with the outside air being pulled into the car and obscuring his vision from inside, too. It isn’t, though, and he knows that. It just feels that way.

In the dream, he’s following another car, and he knows, somehow, that Phil’s the one driving it. Maybe it’s because there’s nobody beside him in the passenger seat, where Phil should be, or maybe it’s because there’s nobody else he’d follow blindly into the dark.

The rear lights of Phil’s car dance strangely with the fog, the way ahead enclosed by a red tunnel of glowing light into which he drives as slowly as he dares. Sometimes he turns the wheel and sometimes he lifts his foot from the accelerator and has to slip back down to second gear. Most of the time, though, he barely has to move.

Nothing really happens in the dream. He just drives. So does Phil.

Both of them, together, in separate cars, along winding country roads, through an endless tunnel of red.

* * *

The sun is too hot.

For some reason he feels unsure about whether he put suncream on this morning, though really, he knows he did. He remembers Phil’s cool hands rubbing lotion into his chest and shoulders and back, following the dip of his spine down, down, down; remembers using his own fingers to cover his forearms and legs in the stuff, too. Even so, he’d swear he can feel the skin on the back of his neck burning and peeling away from the layers underneath. His t-shirt feels like it’s being melted into his body, and the thirty foot drop to the ocean beside him has never looked so inviting. 

Everything is on fire, or at least it feels that way. The air all around him and the air in his lungs, and his blood, too - he swears he can feel his blood and the heat and the scant oxygen and it carries as it races through his veins - it’s all too hot and it’s surrounding him and  _God_ , he’d give anything to be able to just  _breathe_.

He taps Phil’s hand and asks him for water, but it’s warm when Phil passes it to him, trickling down his throat in a way that seems to dry it out even more. He definitely can’t breathe, he’s sure of it now.

“Phil,” he says, then again, louder. Phil turns to look at him and his eyes widen and he takes Dan’s wrist on instinct and holds it tightly.

“Are you okay?” he asks quietly, wide blue eyes searching Dan’s. Dan can barely find the energy to shrug.

“Can’t breathe,” he tells him. “Too hot. Fuck, I can’t breathe, Phil.”

Phil touches the back of a hand to his cheek, to his forehead. “Oh, love. Let’s get you out of the sun, yeah? Get you something cold to drink?”  
  
Dan tries to nod, but he’s not sure that he moves at all.

“Look at me,” Phil says. “I’m here. You’re okay. Dan, please, look at me.”  
  
He says it as though Dan has ever looked away.

* * *

They’re on a hill. It’s the top of a cliff, really, but calling it that sounds scary and dramatic, and Dan’s not ready to consider something scary and dramatic that isn’t himself.

He’s cold, so he wraps his too-long scarf once around his neck and shoves his gloved hands deep into his pockets. He’s with Phil, and Phil’s parents, and Martyn and Cornelia. He’s on the Isle of Man, the beautiful Isle of Man where the air is crisp and clear and there’s nobody but them to be seen, but all he can focus on is how fucking cold he is.

Ahead, Martyn and Cornelia are holding hands, and there’s a flower - a tiny yellow one that Martyn had found sheltered from the elements beside a rock - tucked behind her ear. Phil’s parents are behind them, heads ducked together in conversation. Phil is beside him, matching him step for step.

He’s cold, still, so he adjusts the scarf so that it’s long enough to twist it around his neck once more. This time it covers his nose and mouth, and Dan hopes it’s enough to stop him looking like a bipedal Rudolph for once in his life.

Phil’s parents catch up with them, then his mum overtakes them to walk with her eldest son and his girlfriend. Phil’s dad stays with them, telling Phil a bad joke Dan's sure he found in a Christmas cracker thirty years ago and has repeated annually ever since.

Dan drops back from them, though he’s not sure he means to. His feet are just so damn cold that it seems to take all of his energy to move them, and he’s concentrating so much on keeping the lower half of his face wrapped inside his scarf that he can barely look at where the Lesters and Cornelia are ahead of him.

Before too long - probably seconds after he realises Dan’s legs aren’t moving in-time beside his - Phil drops back to walk by his side; hands in his own pockets and his shoulder rubbing against Dan’s, asking if he’s okay.

Dan says he is. He presses back against Phil’s shoulder, hoping to find some warmth, but he’s sure he won’t unless his hand is in Phil’s, right here in the open air.

He’s cold, but the scarf won’t wind around his neck again.

* * *

 

  
He doesn’t feel particularly sad today.  
  
He’s also not particularly happy.

Ordinarily, this would be an okay day. One where he’s not at his best, but he’s certainly not at his lowest. Ordinarily, he could take the day for what it is, take himself for how he feels, but today isn’t an ordinary day, and because of that, even more so than normal, he desperately doesn’t want to feel like this.

It’s not an ordinary day because they’re at Disney, and it’s just the two of them, and to only feel ‘okay’ when he’s here, with the love of his life at the ‘happiest place on earth’, feels like a failure.

In the late afternoon there’s a thunderstorm, one of those Florida storms that only someone who has experienced them can describe. It’s one of those storms that appears out of nowhere and is gone almost as quickly as it came, with lashing rain that falls sideways on its way to the ground and deep rumbles of thunder that sound both impossibly close and echoingly distant at the same time.

Phil rushes to find shelter as soon as he feels water first hit his skin, but Dan isn’t in such a hurry. When the raindrops grow bigger and start to soak him and the seconds he counts between the thunder and lightning grow smaller, he stops, looking up at the storm building around him.

He can hear Phil calling him, telling him to come and shelter, but he doesn’t. Even though he’s soaked almost to his bones already and getting out of the rain would be more than sensible, he almost feels like he can’t.

If this were a movie instead of real life, he’d spread his arms and laugh at the sky as it’s split in two by a brilliantly bright fork of lightning; but it's not, it's real life, so he doesn’t. He settles for tilting his head back into the onslaught of water, and running an already-dripping hand through his hair.

He can feel the rain on every inch of his skin and running in streams down his back beneath his shirt, feels the puddle that he’s standing in lapping over the soles of his sandals and in between his toes. If this were a movie, he’d dance in the rain and pull Phil, watching him from under the canopy of a teacup ride, out into the storm with him; but it’s not, so he doesn’t. Instead, he kicks gently at the water on the ground with each step that he takes towards Phil, splashing it into the air, towards nobody in particular.

He wants to kiss him then - Phil, his Phil - so much that he almost does, in front of the children clutching ever more tightly at their parents, themselves exasperated and sodden, with every roll of thunder. If this were a movie, he would, and Phil would cling to his wet shirt and open his lips against Dan’s, but it’s not, and none of those things happen. The rain stops hitting him suddenly, when he walks beneath the canopy without realising he’s done so, and he presses his side against Phil’s.

“You bastard,” Phil laughs quietly as Dan’s wet t-shirt clings to his arm, shoving him away so that he drips onto the floor instead of his dry clothes.

Dan raises an eyebrow before shaking his hair out like a dog, so that the water soaking it flat against his head flies straight at Phil.

Phil curses him again, laughing. Dan laughs too, so much that his sides ache.

If this were a movie, he’d say he finally feels alive.

**Author's Note:**

> legdabs on tumblr // rb on tungle [here](https://legdabs.tumblr.com/post/181884537071/snow-and-dirty-rain-rating-t-word-count-21k) if u want.
> 
> im tired of trying can you tell lmao


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